• The air was dusty. Also the air had a greasy smell. - Out of the dust. page 73

Welcome to the "Life in the Great Depression" Wiki... It's great

Dorthea Lange's famous photo

Getting Started

• Click on the edit button above to put your own content on this page.
• Add information from:
  • The Grapes of Wrath
  • Out of the Dust
  • Cinderella Man
  • Other research sources
• Share anything you learned about life during this time period with your classmates.
• Choose from the categories below (or create your own) and share any information (include the source & the page number) you think would be helpful for someone writing a historical narrative.

How They Talked

• People utilized the term, "ain't," all throughout their vocabularies.

What life was like for children:

• Children often didn't have enough food to eat. (Cinderella Man)
• Children were often sent away becuase their parents couldn't take care of them.
• The government sent food to the schools(Hesse 117)

What people did to survive the Great Depression:

• Sometimes, they stole things, like the little boy who stole the salami. (Cinderella Man)
• ​"When people need certain things to survive, they will go go against their morals" - Cinderella Man
• The men, farmers, who were traveling to California for work, always took guns (Steinbeck, 46)
• People did things against their morals. (Cinderella Man)
• Families would water-down their milk to make it last longer. (Cinderella Man)
• They acted differently in order to survive. (Cinderalla Man)
• Food was tanted like dust. (Out of the dust, pg 21)
• The government sent money to keep faming going (OUT OF THE DUST, 117)

What life was like for men:

• The farmers in the mid-west were really bitter about losing their farms and land to the banks (Steinbeck, 45-46).
• Men had to do everything, work-wise. (Steinbeck, 443)
• Young men left home to find a better life. (Hesse, 58)
• Teenagers would walk to California for work and leave behind their families. (Hesse 58)
• Men felt like they couldn't provide for thier families and it made them depressed.(cindrella man)

What life was like for women:

• The women looked at all of their belongings and realized that they couldn't bring them with them to California, so they had to decide which were the most important and leave the others behind (Steinbeck, 145).
• Ma aches for rain ( Hesse 55).

What life was like for families:

• The houses were left vacant, people would just pick up and leave to go to California. (Steinbeck, 157)
• Families were low on food and had to send their children away. (Cinderella Man)
• Tractors would plow over families homes, if they couldn't afford there house. (Stenibeck, 47)
• Took ill with the dust Pneumonia ( Hesse 140).
• They had to live in smaller house/apartments because they couldnt afford bigger ones. (Cinderalla Man)
• had to water down milk (cindy mahn)
• The air was dusty. Also the air had a greasy smell. - Out of the dust. page 73
• People were so desperate that they worshiped even the slightest bath. - Grapes of Wrath 342

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Helpful websites you can visit for more information:

• http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/depression.htm
• http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/afctshtml/tshome.html
• http://lcweb2.loc.gov/wpaintro/wpahome.html
• http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html
• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/dustbowl/storyHighlights/
• 
  

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Ideas for writing your historical narrative:

• A family traveling from Oklahoma to California
• A young man out of work and living in Hooverville, Central Park
• A Red Cross worker who works at the soup and bread lines every day
• A kid that cannot afford to get medicine for himself, and it talks about his journey.

poopoo

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